Sound — 8
This guitar sounds great for rock and metal type music. I play a lot of Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Nickleback, Joe Satriani, and Greenday an do a lot of blues improvisation. The distorted sound with this guitar is good, but it also has a decent clean tone. I use a Line6 Spider IV, an for my music stlye it works great. I also play with my schools jazz band and it works well for that. For a fuller sound I recommend medium instead of light strings.

Overall Impression — 8
The only thing I regret about purchasing this guitar is that I did not ask if I could find another guitar with a Floyd Rose bridge for the same price. An come to find out I could have had a Kirk Hemmet series LTD with one, for the same price of $330. I love the sound of this guitar, but I would prefer EMG pick ups instead. This guitar still sounds great for metal and rock, most other genre's still sound alrite with it though. If something happened to this guitar I would definitely not buy the same guitar over but would upgrade to a higher dollar LTD. I've been playing for about a year and a half, but only have take guitar lessons for a little over a year. But I have had experience playing and performing with other instuments before guitar. I didn't compare this guitar to any other product, and I regret it, but I can't say that I'm disappointed with this guitar. Especially considering that my other guitar is so outdated I can't find as much as a photo of it anywhere on the internet, and it doesn't sound great at all for my style anyways. Unfortanately the old one looks like someone threw off the side of a building, and the woods chipped off and the finish has had the crap scratched out of it. Overall this is a great guitar and is definitely worth more than I payed.

Reliability & Durability — 10
This guitar has been highly dependable, no worries that anything would go wrong during a performance, I've performed with this guitar twice for a middle school jazz band concert and for a instumental competition at school where I took 2nd of 4 acts with it, and practice several hours a day on this guitar. I would feel comfortable picking this guitar up by the strap and swinging it around, the strap will not come off by accident and I've been using a First Act strap. I haven't had anything happen to this guitar yet and don't plan on it. You should't have a problem out this guitar until you decide to smash it. But in case of some freak accident I would definitely have a backup. But I'll soon be using this as my backup after I upgrade to a LTD EC-1000FR Deluxe this fall.

Action, Fit & Finish — 10
When I bought this guitar the bridge was perfect for me, but I like the action a little low. The neck pickup needed adjusting, it was a little to high but that was an easy fix. There was not a flaw on the finish, or hardware. Tuning pegs were on tight, no rust, no loose controls, etc.

Features — 7
I've owned this guitar for about a year now. Definitely not the best guitar I've played on, but it is worth more than the epiphone's and squire's I've played selling for $400-$500. ESP tuners actually keep the guitar in tune fairly well, as for Epiphones around the same price only keep the guitar in tune for as long as you can go without bending a string or even lightly tapping the machine heads. Passive electronics so you don't have to use batteries to power the pickups or whatever. Has a string-thru body but I prefer a Floyd Rose. The design is fairly original I've haven't found many guitars that look closely to this one. Basswood body with a flamed maple top. Has a STBLACK finish, not very common but everyone says they like it. Black nickle hardware, has one volume and one tone knob, although a volume and tone knob for each pick up would be better. Also has a 3-way toggle. ESP LH-150 pickups both bridge and neck, great for hard rock and metal, it also does well with blues, and plays country and jazz alrite. But the pick ups definitely would not be my first choice for any genre. Has a maple neck and rosewood fretboard, comfortable but not what I would use to shred on. Has 24 extra jumbo frets, dotted inlays with the model name at the 12th fret. It is a 2006 model, made in Korea. Also I would recommend getting a case, I payed another $100 for an MBT case and its been well worth it.